Monday, January 14, 2008

The First HK Summit on Social Enterprise

12/20/07. Ventures in Development was invited to speak at the first Hong Kong Summit on Social Enterprise, which aimed to bring together a wealth of public and private sector leaders, social enterprise practioners, CSR, media and student representatives, and concerned citizens. Kicked off with a speech by HK Chief Executive Donald Tsang, conference participants then benefited from three key note speeches by leading industry practioners from The Young Foundation, The Hong Kong Home Affairs Bureau and The Ashoka Foundation. We then broke out into panel discussion sections, one of which featured Marie So, introducing Shokay as a model for social enterprise development. From the Summit, it became clear that there is a lot of passion, interest and excitement for the development of HK’s social enterprise sector.

During our panel sessions, people raised interesting questions such as the role of the government in funding social enterprises, how to raise solve social issues in an innovative manner, and how can individuals learn how to start up and run these organizations, to name a few. Much follow up needs to be done by both the Home Affairs Bureau and individual organizations to engage current and future leaders to continue this important dialogue. We are very excited to be a part of the leadership driving the burgeoning social enterprise scene in HK. Thank you to the Home Affairs Bureau, we hope to see a Second SE Summit in 2008!